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Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness Movie Review

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is a 2022 superhero film directed by Sam Raimi and starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Elizabeth Olsen. It’s a very disappointing flick.

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“You have ideas as the same rate that the rest of us change clothes“

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Dr. Stephen Strange casts a forbidden spell that opens a portal to the multiverse. However, a grand threat in the form of Scarlet Witch emerges. This is a rare MCU movie that I’d decided not to watch in a theater and I had been right all along. It’s just not for me for various reasons, the biggest one being that I am simply sick and tired of all these multiverse movies. This is just a fad and I hope it will go away quickly because it’s just not interesting to me. Even worse, this particular movie felt very stifled in its portrayal of the multiverse as we only see two universes in full with the others being fleeting glimpses. Why call your movie Multiverse of Madness if you are not going to deliver on that title?

As a huge ‘Doctor Strange’ fan (it is still in my top three Marvel movies so far), I was so disappointed that he was relegated to a secondary character status in his own movie. That was so frustrating to witness, but expected after his weak turn in ‘No Way Home’. Benedict Cumberbatch is excellent as he always is in this role and the character is still fun and cool when using his powers, but more often than not this felt like a Wanda movie, which was annoying.

This was especially irritating to watch as somebody who hasn’t seen her show. What is happening now is that Marvel is entirely ditching their casual fans in favor of hardcore ones. I don’t want to watch all these shows just so that I can follow the movies. I just want to see the movies. As a result of that failed connection for me, I could not relate to anything that happened to Wanda here.

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She was cool and menacing for sure. She was badass in her action scenes and I loved me some magic in these superhero movies, but again her entire storyline with her children wasn’t as important to me as it was to other people who watched that show as I wasn’t acquainted with it. The shift to a villain, thus, happened too fast for me and I did not buy it.

As for the supporting players, it was cool seeing Charlize Theron in a very fun post-credits sequence. America Chavez is this new introduction as a girl with the power to travel to different universes. She was underdeveloped in my opinion. I liked her quite a bit, but I wanted more from her. Wong was as likable and as cool as always while all the others are disposable.

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse Madness was touted for its horror elements and for all that extensive marketing, the end result felt surprisingly mellow and dull in that regard. You’d think that Sam Raimi would bring something creepy in that horror vein, but even he could not go against the MCU machine unfortunately. His directing here is only serviceable.

The script is very messy while the dialogue can also be quite on-the-nose. The visuals are awesome and a couple of scenes in the different universes were beautiful to behold and so spectacular, but those are few and far between as most of the movie was unfortunately decidedly unspectacular. It also needed more humor, though the action was definitely very well executed and entertaining to watch.

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